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Australian News
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Tuesday, 21 May 2013 |
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Community voices will be heard at the very heart of the National Registration and Accreditation Scheme (National Scheme) with the establishment of a Community Reference Group to work with AHPRA and the National Boards - the first time a national group of this kind has been established in Australia. Seven members from the community, who are not health practitioners, have been appointed to the group, which will be chaired by Mr Paul Laris, a community member on two Boards in the National Scheme. The group will have a number of roles, including providing feedback, information and advice on strategies for building better knowledge in the community about health practitioner regulation, but also advising AHPRA on how to better understand, and most importantly, meet, community needs.
AHPRA CEO Mr Martin Fletcher said that the Community Reference Group was an important step to increasing community input into health practitioner regulation. ‘Health practitioner regulation affects everyone, because it is about public safety. But not many people are aware of how it works or what it does,’ Mr Fletcher said.
‘The Community Reference Group will work with the 14 National Boards and AHPRA and advise us how we can build community awareness, understanding and support for the Australia’s regulatory scheme for health practitioners,’ he said.
The group will be chaired by Mr Paul Laris, who is a community member of the Medical Board of Australia as well as of its South Australian Board. Mr Laris said the group's establishment was timely.
‘The national regulatory scheme is firmly in place. There are already community members on all National Boards, and this new advisory group will give another voice to the wider community,’ Mr Laris said. ‘The Community Reference Group will establish an important channel for greater community input and advice to the National Boards and AHPRA, and help build community understanding of the importance of regulation in protecting the public,’ he said. As part of a scheduled review this year, the National Boards are undertaking wide-ranging consultations on the standards, codes and guidelines that establish the requirements for registration of practitioners. ‘It is vital that health service users have a major input into the review of standards, codes and guidelines. The purpose of the scheme is to ensure public safety and access to safe and effective health care. We can best ensure that by involving the community in the planning, implementation and delivery of the scheme,’ said Mr Laris.
The establishment of the Community Reference Group follows a series of community forums held by AHPRA in 2012, in partnership with the Consumers Health Forum of Australia (CHF). The forums were an opportunity for AHPRA and the National Boards to hear, first hand, the thoughts and opinions of members of the community, and better understand how to build ongoing engagement with the community. Attendees to these forums were encouraged to nominate for the Community Reference Group.
CHF CEO, Ms Carol Bennett, said that establishing a group which had the purpose of representing community voices and help engage the wider community is an important step in the maturation of the national scheme for regulating health practitioners.
‘The Community Reference Group will ensure that consumers have a voice in the regulation of health practitioners. This group will also be a key part of AHPRA’s consumer engagement strategy, which began last year with a series of community briefings across Australia,’ said Ms Bennett.
The Community Reference Group will have its first meeting in June 2013.
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Australian News
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Monday, 20 May 2013 |
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The Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Ophthalmologists (RANZCO) strongly oppose the recent Australian budget announcement capping work-related education expenses at $2,000 from July 1, 2014.
RANZCO CEO Dr David Andrews said “this is an unnecessary obstacle for ophthalmologists, and in fact all doctors, who wish to improve their skills and knowledge so they can provide better healthcare to their patients.”
“Capping educational expenses makes it difficult for medical eye specialists to attend a wide range of educational events, which they are required to do by the Government to meet strict mandatory continuing education requirements,” said Dr Andrews.
“The policy simply doesn’t make sense. On the one hand the Government requires doctors to participate in rigorous on-going education to ensure the standard of healthcare provided remains amongst the best in the world, but then they decide to cap how this can occur.”
“The Australian Government needs to reconsider this policy as a matter of urgency. At present they risk Australians no longer enjoying the high quality of specialist healthcare they have come to expect.”
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Australian News
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Wednesday, 15 May 2013 |
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ODMA has announced the finalists in the 2013 ODMA Awards of Excellence program, aimed to reward the very best in fashion, innovation and technology. All exhibitors confirmed to participate at the ODMA|2013 event were invited to submit entries across a range of categories for review by a specialist, independent judging panel chaired by ODMA Executive Director Finola Carey. The panel members were: Fiona Stapleton, Professor and Head of School at UNSW School of Optometry and Vision Science; David Wilson, former OTEN dispensing head teacher and now Education Consultant at ICEE and Adjunct Senior Lecturer Vision CRC; Independent practice owner and dispenser Grant Hannaford; and publisher of Eyetalk Margaret McCann.
Three finalists were selected in each product category:
Optical Frames Category: Finalists: European Eyewear, Eyes Right Optical, Van Staveren Eyewear
Sunglasses Category: Finalists: Gloryfy, Rodenstock, Eyes Right Optical
Children's Frames Category: Finalists: General Optical, Mann Optics, Noo Eyewear
Sports Eyewear Category: Finalists: Bolle Australia, Eyres Optics, Mimo Pty Ltd
Lens Design Category: Finalists: Essilor Australia, Rodenstock, Shamir Australia
Lens Treatment Category: Finalists: Essilor Australia, Eyres Optics, Zeal Optics Australia
Equipment Category: Finalists: Designs for Vision, Essilor Australia, European Eyewear
Product Environment Category: Finalists: Essilor Australia, Safilo Australia, Eyes Right Optical
For the details of the finalists' products goto the voting form at: http://www.odma-2013.com.au/wp-content/plugins/EEMP/votingform.php
In a first for the Awards program, a new category has been introduced in 2013 recognising The Rep of the Year, for which voters are encouraged to submit their nominations for their favourite rep in five regions across Australia and New Zealand.
ODMA|2013 visitors are invited to vote for their favourites in each category at the voting website: www.odma-2013.com.au/awards. Voting closes on June 23, 2013.
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Australian News
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Monday, 13 May 2013 |
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 Bionic Vision Australia has developed an app that simulates the sort of vision that a person might experience using a bionic eye. The bionic eye is a retinal implant, placed at the back of the eye to restore a sense of vision for people with profound vision loss due to degenerative conditions of the retina. An external camera captures the visual scene and sends data to the implant. Electrodes on the implant electrically stimulate the nerve cells in the retina, providing a sense of vision. In this app, each spot of light that appears represents one electrode.
The purpose of the app is to simulate what bionic vision might look like. The app is not able to exactly represent the kind of vision processing that will be deployed with the full bionic eye devices. Research and development of vision processing strategies for the actual bionic eye implant is being completed at the NICTA Computer Vision Research Group in Canberra. Further, each and every patient’s experience with a bionic eye will be different and hence the vision they experience might be different to what is represented in the app. It is intended for education purposes only and is now available for Android devices at Google Play and soon for iOS.
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Australian News
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Thursday, 09 May 2013 |
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Sydney Eye Hospital and the Lions NSW Eye Bank have introduced a corneal storage technique - Organ Culture Storage - which significantly increases the potential donor pool and the storage time for donated corneas to be used for transplantation for up to 28 days - compared to six days with traditional cold storage.
Stored in an incubator at 34 degrees Celsius, organ culture corneas can be stored at a temperature close to the physiological temperature of the human body, and have resulted in a 47% increase in corneal transplants - effectively eliminating the waiting list for corneal transplantation. Professor Gerard Sutton, Corneal and Refractive Surgery Specialist, Sydney Eye Hospital and Acting Medical Director of the Lions NSW Eye Bank, said the advantages of using organ culture are significant and manifold.
“In 2005, the waiting time for a corneal transplant in NSW was two years. With the introduction of this technology we can now schedule patients for corneal transplantation within three months,” Professor Sutton said. “Through the higher temperature used in organ culture, metabolism of the cells are maintained and provide the corneal tissue with a complex mixture of amino acids and growth factor which enables it to repair damaged cells and maintain its normal function. “In cold storage, low temperatures and the presence of antibiotics can make it difficult to detect any bacteria that may be present in the tissue, as most bacteria will not grow under these conditions. However, the 34 degree Celsius storage and additional microbiological testing of the Organ Culture Storage increases the safety of the donated corneas through improved sensitivity to detect bacterial and fungal contaminants,” he said.
Donated eyes are examined as soon as possible to determine suitability for transplantation. The density of the endothelium within the donated eye is an index of the quality of the cornea and is key to the decision of suitable recipient selection.
Professor Sutton said, in cold storage, endothelial density assessment is performed within 12 hours from death, as after this period the endothelium becomes excessively folded. In Organ Culture Storage, this can be extended to within 24 hours, as the endothelial assessment is done at a later stage. “As a result of the increased ability to detect microbial contaminants and extending the time from death to storage, Organ Culture Storage offers a larger donor pool from which donated corneas can be used for transplantation,” Professor Sutton said.
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Australian News
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Tuesday, 07 May 2013 |
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 The Bosch Institute at the University of Sydney conducts an Annual Scientific Meeting (ASM) each year. It is a full day program and registration is required. This year the event, with support from the ARC Centre of Excellence in Vision Science, will run over two full days and will feature more than 20 national and international speakers.
This year's theme is: "Visual Neuroscience: Modern Challenges and Australian Pioneers". This meeting will present cutting edge work in major themes pioneered by Peter Orlebar Bishop (1917 -2012), Professor of Physiology at the University of Sydney (1955-1967), and at the Australian National University (1967 – 1983).
The scientific sessions will be in five themes, all pioneered by Bishop and his colleagues: thalamic processing of retinal input, parallel processing of visual information, physiological optics, cortical processing of visual information, and neural basis of stereopsis.
The ASM will be held on Thursday 27th - Friday 28th June 2013 between 8.45am and 5.00pm with registrations starting at 8.00am at the New Law School Lecture Theatre 101, The University of Sydney.
For the full list of speakers goto: http://sydney.edu.au/medicine/bosch/events/scientific-meeting/index.php#ASM2013
Registration is free and essential for catering purposes. To register goto: http://surveys.med.usyd.edu.au/limesurvey/index.php?sid=67998&lang=en
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